Besides the thousands of diets available to help you lose weight, there are also hundreds of different strategies you can apply to those diets.

I have tried a few strategies, and luckily, I found one that works very well for me early on. It’s also one of the most common strategies you’ll find online regarding dieting: intermittent fasting.

The internet has made intermittent fasting far more complicated than it needs to be.

In very simple terms, intermittent fasting involves having a set eating window and a set fasting window. The longer the fasting window, the more calories you’ll be able to burn, and the fewer opportunities you’ll have to consume calories.

A very common intermittent fasting approach is the 16/8 rule: eating for 8 hours, fasting for 16 hours.

Besides that, there are also strategies that limit the number of calories you can consume per meal and how many meals you can eat.

For those who know me, I like to keep things simple and basic. And simple and basic is also, most of the time, effective and sustainable.

But before we get into how I apply intermittent fasting and how I am currently using it to lose body fat, let’s go over the benefits of intermittent fasting.

Benefits

Once again, when you go online, you will see all kinds of different benefits associated with intermittent fasting. Some are total nonsense, and some seem like nonsense but are actually true. Here are some of the benefits I have experienced:

• Mental clarity and memory: Often, when I work while in a fasting state, I get into a flow state much faster. At first, this benefit seemed like something out of a fantasy movie, but it actually happens most of the time.
• Faster fat burning: If you have a specific eating window, you will automatically consume fewer calories. Add to that the longer fasting state (which burns calories), and it’s not rocket science—you will burn more fat and lose weight faster.
• Getting stronger and leaner: I’ve read in multiple studies that people get stronger while getting leaner. I can confirm that this is true. Whether it’s due to intermittent fasting is not 100% certain, but I can confirm that I am getting leaner while getting stronger in the gym.

My Way of Intermittent Fasting

Now that you know the benefits of intermittent fasting, let’s dive into how I do intermittent fasting. Oh, one last thing about the benefits of intermittent fasting (or benefits in general): Always test it out for a sufficient amount of time before drawing conclusions about whether the benefits are real or not.

Experience is the best teacher, so try it out! Maybe you’ll experience all the benefits, more, or none at all. That being said, let’s now really hop into how I do intermittent fasting.

As I mentioned before, intermittent fasting is greatly overcomplicated because of the vast amount of information available on the topic.

And my style is to keep it as simple as possible: just delay your first meal.

That’s it.

If your first meal is at 9 a.m., eat your first meal at 10 a.m. BUT keep the time of your last meal. So if your last meal is around 6 p.m., keep it at 6 p.m.

This way, you will slowly but surely increase the fasting window and, therefore, decrease the eating window.

As a bonus, I want to add this: eat your meal prep as your first meal.

Why?

• You’ll have lots of room for other foods afterward.
• You’ll feel full.
• You’ll already hit a big portion of your protein intake (if your meal preps are high in protein, which I definitely recommend).

I can already hear some of you saying this: “So you are skipping breakfast?”

Yep.

Breakfast

Do I eat 3 meals or 2 meals? I eat 2 meals: my meal prep and dinner. And some fruits as snacks. So yeah, I skip breakfast.

But I didn’t intentionally skip breakfast. I just delayed my first meal, and naturally, I reduced my meals from 3 to 2 because I just couldn’t fit 3 meals into my eating window.

A lot of people look at me super weird when I say that. And yes, it is super weird not to eat first thing in the morning.

Was it hard to skip breakfast? Not gonna lie, yes, it was hard.

If you are used to eating every morning, you will, of course, be accustomed to it.

The biggest critique I hear when I tell people I skip breakfast is that they won’t feel energized if they skip breakfast.

The funny thing about this is that I’ve experienced the total opposite.

I get more energy from skipping breakfast than eating breakfast.

I haven’t looked into the science too much, but from the little research I have done, the reason I feel more energy is because my body isn’t using energy to process breakfast.

I’m not sure if that’s the case, but I do know that I have more energy when I skip breakfast.

Conclusion

So what’s the conclusion here?

Try intermittent fasting.

If you are looking for a good strategy to pair with your diet and really boost your fat loss process, definitely try intermittent fasting.

You can choose another variant of intermittent fasting—there are a lot of different ones—but personally, I like to keep things simple.

Just delay the first meal as much as possible. That’s it.

Simplicity is key.

Try it out and see the benefits for yourself. If you don’t like it or feel bad after it, stop intermittent fasting.

But do that only after you’ve tried it for at least 2 months.

Good luck, and have a nice day, my friend!